


pale white dreams

by volchitza



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Gen, M/M, Modern Era, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-18
Updated: 2013-03-18
Packaged: 2017-12-05 17:59:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/726188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/volchitza/pseuds/volchitza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Bahorel takes Grantaire to meet Les Amis for the first time, it is a chilly April day, and all the flowers on the trees are blossoming. The branches are overburdened by a cascade of white and pink, the most tender green of newborn leaves punctuating the explosion of petals. Grantaire almost forgets where he’s going - not that he’s particularly keen on it, but Bahorel has been insisting for weeks - wondering how he would render the feeling of this precise moment in a painting. A watercolour, he thinks, on a slightly grainy paper.</p>
            </blockquote>





	pale white dreams

**Author's Note:**

> betaed by my wonderful, wonderful tumblr wife Laurie. Thank you.

Believing in Enjolras comes so naturally to those who hear him as being followed comes to him.

He has been nothing but the leader his whole life: in kindergarten, he was the kid deciding which game all would play; if he cared for such trivialities, he would’ve been prom king in high school; and now he led new revolutionaries - which is but a fancy term for “social activists” Prouvaire likes to use, and that Enjolras silently approves of.

When Bahorel takes Grantaire to meet Les Amis for the first time, it is a chilly April day, and all the flowers on the trees are blossoming. The branches are overburdened by a cascade of white and pink, the most tender green of newborn leaves punctuating the explosion of petals. Grantaire almost forgets where he’s going - not that he’s particularly _keen_ on it, but Bahorel has been insisting for weeks - wondering how he would render the feeling of this precise moment in a painting. _A watercolour_ , he thinks, _on a slightly grainy paper_.

He forgets all about the painting as soon as he enters the Café Musain, because there, in the light of a deceivingly normal day, he meets Enjolras. He would be a vision to anyone, but Grantaire is an _artist_. In the space of a glance, he has already seen all of his passion, his brilliance and his nature. Breathless, he trips on his own feet, but the group doesn’t notice, because Enjolras is speaking.

As fresh water springs from a rock, words come out of his mouth and they move his listeners to him. They drink from his speech only to find in themselves a thirst they had never before acknowledged.

Grantaire, himself, has never believed in anything - no higher cause or ideal or hope of redemption for humanity - yet he too feels the same thirst as the others feel, falling under Enjolras’ spell.

“Guys, this is Grantaire”, Bahorel says as Joly and Bousset make place for them on a bench.

His arrival is met by a jumble of greetings: handshakes and smiles and encouraging «ça va?»’s from all these new, bright faces (with the exception of Feuilly whom he knew already); he can’t help but think that it’s mostly because these people have hearts willing to find goodness in everyone, and Bahorel’s voice has a hue of honesty that makes you trust anything he says. Still, he sits back and enjoys listening to Enjolras talking about projects for the future and doing a recap of past issues, or at least he tries to: Enjolras looks more like a picture of Saint Michael than a man, and Grantaire’s never been the focused type.

 

 

Marius and Éponine walk out together and he holds the door for her while she fishes a pack of cigarettes out of her bag.

“Today was a bit boring”, she comments, placing a cigarette between her lips. “Except for the Grantaire guy. He was cool”.

Marius starts a protest, only to be interrupted by her swearing.

“Fuck. My lighter’s dead. Feuilly is gone, isn’t he? Shit”.

He shakes his head, standing by as Éponine turns around on her heel looking for someone who could help her.

“Still a damn scroundger, Thénardier?”, comes a voice from the other side of the street.

“Montparnasse!”, she exclaims when she sees him crossing towards them, her voice a thrill of relief, “you’re a life savior!”.

Montparnasse chuckles, handing her his own packet of smokes, and says, “Well, I don’t know about _that_ ”.

Marius stiffens; Éponine takes a deep puff before looking up at him and asking, “You didn’t have plans for later, did you?”.

He didn’t, but he still doesn’t look happy.

“What is it, Pontmercy, don’t tell me you’re _jealous_ ”, she teases, drumming her fingers on his chest.

Marius frowns, confused. “No, of course not. Well, have fun”, he tells them, but his eyes say _I don’t trust him_.

“Sure”, she answers, hiding her disappointment as she realizes that he really isn’t jealous. “See you tomorrow then!”.

When he’s sure Marius is out of earshot, Montparnasse leans into her ear, just because he can, and “Look at you”, he mutters, “I thought you didn’t have a crush on him anymore”.

“Shut up”, she silences him. “What are you even doing around here?”

“Well, yours is still the best ass in Paris”, he admits, laughing when she hits him, “but I’m actually here because I’ve got some new stuff”.

Her eyes spark with attention. “You need a dealer?”, she asks, lowering her voice.

“I did hope we could have a bit of fun... beforehand”, he whispers suggestively, and Éponine smirks.

“I believe you’ve got a spare helmet with you, don’t you?”

 

 

Marius is counting the spare change in his pocket, wondering if he should risk getting on the bus without a ticket or rather use his last money for the sake of legality when the bus gets to the stop and he catches a glimpse of blonde hair through the window.

Quick and without a second thought to the matters of small infractions, he jumps on the bus.

She’s sitting by the window, listening to her iPod. Her head only slightly moves to the rhythm of the music while her eyes wander towards him, as they usually do when the bus reaches his stop. He always gets on it hoping she’ll be there, and she always raises her head looking for him - they’ve been dancing around each other for weeks, now, but neither has made a move.

Marius calls her Ursule in his head, because once he’d seen her reading a book about architecture with “Ursule” followed by a surname he couldn’t make out written on it. He’s enchanted by her every movement, and the way the sun glistens on her hair. He wants to know why she’s into architecture and what kind of music she’s always listening to. He wants to know if her hands are soft, and if they long to touch his own as much as his do, but he’s too afraid to disturb her, so he just tells himself that one day, one day he’ll talk to her, and she’ll smile to him.

When she gets down, he goes to sit where she was. The seat is still warm; he sighs, calling himself a lovelorn idiot in his head.

 

 

Éponine likes Montparnasse’s cherry lips and his long-fingered pale hands. They are lips that have uttered the most violent of words, and issued death sentences; hands that have been washed from another’s blood, and that have, on occasion, killed: but they are hands that would never harm her, and lips that could only mock her, or kiss her.

She takes pleasure in this. He is a dangerous man with as perilous eyes and they are deep and beautiful; he never shows her any weakness, but he likes to find some rest in the space between her neck and her shoulder.

“Louder louder louder”, he tells her when she screams under him, and she obliges arching her back and pulling at his hair with the precise purpose of hurting him.

Montparnasse calls her a bad word, but she’s too busy trying to catch her frantic breath to care.

When he collapses over her, she imagines freckles over his shoulder for a moment, and wonders how Marius would touch her, and with what tenderness.

She is pulled back to reality by Montparnasse offering her a dubious-looking smoke.

“No, thank you”, she denies with a gesture of her hand, “I have to go to Azelma and Gavroche after I get out of here”.

He chuckles, upholding his head with his hand. “You look very beautiful, mademoiselle Thénardier”, he compliments her, something he doesn’t do much.

Éponine rolls her eyes. “Cut the crap, Montparnasse”, she says, but she secretly enjoys the way his name rolls of her mouth. “How much can we make out of it?”.

“We? Who ever said there was a ‘we’?”, he jokes.

She snorts. “Please”, she scoffs.

“Alright, alright, little tiger, alright. You won’t be disappointed, I promise”, he says, promenading his fingers up her thigh.

“Alas, you will be. I don’t have time for seconds”, she warns him, standing up to look for her bra.

Montparnasse shrugs. “You’ll owe me, then”.

“I don’t owe you anything”, she declares, suddenly stone-cold and stone-hard. “Either that much is clear or you won’t see me again”.

He catches her by the shirt with an outstretched hand and pulls her to him until she’s close enough for him to kiss her.

“Relax, sweetheart. You know how it is between us. I was only joking”, he reassures her, sincere as the air of a clear winter morning can be, and the depth of his voice so near to her body shakes her and makes something melt inside Éponine.

She nods against his nose and he kisses her, wet and hot and, strangely enough, one of the few sure, steady things in her life.

 

 

At first, Enjolras feels something towards Grantaire he can’t quite place; he watches him week after week sitting in a corner of the café at their table, a beer bottle always in his hand, and a sneer always ready to come up to his lips, never lighting up his eyes. It makes him feel like he’s in the middle of a half-finished gesture he can’t bring to conclusion, like he’s standing in the middle of a dream and he doesn’t know where he comes from or what he must do in order to get out. He feels an odd sensation linking him to Grantaire, like an invisible but physical thread; and when the light hits his dark curls, a familiar as well as repressed hunger very nearly comes to the surface.

He questions the reason behind his smirks, once, and Grantaire knows that if Enjolras has ever looked in a benevolent or good way upon him, he’s going to lose everything by answering; and yet he can’t bring himself to lie, not to him. It’s almost like he’s made a promise to himself, never to lie to Enjolras, without knowing why - but what he knows is that it would feel like staining an idol, or breaking a promise made whispering things under the moonlight and sharing blood.

So he answers bluntly: he says that he doesn’t agree.

“You see, you were talking about making fliers, and making them as good as we can, and in the back of my mind I was thinking that I could help - I’m a painter, I could draw something”, he begins, and his heart clenches painfully at the sight of a glint of hope in Enjolras’ eyes, a glint he knows he will never see again, “but then I lost hope. I thought about those fliers we will put so much care into, and I saw them scattered on the floor, walked upon, crumpled and thrown away. They won’t last thirty seconds in the hands of those students you rely on so much. You can’t put your faith in a human being. It’s as simple as that. You can’t put your faith in a human being”, he states, taking a long sip to gain enough courage to look back up into Enjolras’ eyes, and going against his own advice at the same time.

What he finds looking up is that Enjolras’ eyes are a cold place; and Enjolras tells himself that whatever feeling he had regarding Grantaire was only the immediate, spontaneous recognition of their irreconcilable differencies. He doesn’t admit that he misses their almost friendship, or the ghost of a bond he has felt connecting him to Grantaire. He buries that admission along with any tenderness that might’ve opened his heart; he buries it with bitterness and scorn and contempt.

Grantaire drowns the memory of his look in alcohol, trying to drink down an impossible lump in his throat.

Éponine holds his hand under the table, because she has liked him from the beginning, and she knows exactly what unrequited love looks like - what marks it leaves lingering in one’s expression after everyone’s looked away.


End file.
